ArticleRoyal Society open science2017
The York Gospels: a 1000-year biological palimpsest.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed.
- Three thousand five hundred years of sheeppox virus evolution inferred from archaeological and codicological genomes.Science advances · 2026Article
- Metagenomic and microbiological analyses of historical manuscripts for bacterial community profiling and bacteria-related biodeterioration assessment.Microbial cell (Graz, Austria) · 2026Article
- Hiding in plain sight: the biomolecular identification of pinniped use in medieval manuscripts.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Genomic analysis of three medieval parchments from German monasteries.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Clothomics: a practical guide to understand the opportunities and challenges of omics-based methods in archaeological cloth research.NPJ heritage science · 2025Review
- Fungal biodeterioration and preservation of cultural heritage, artwork, and historical artifacts: extremophily and adaptation.Microbiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR · 2024Review
- SpecieScan: semi-automated taxonomic identification of bone collagen peptides from MALDI-ToF-MS.Bioinformatics (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
- The development of non-destructive sampling methods of parchment skins for genetic species identification.PloS one · 2024Article
- Artefact Profiling: Panomics Approaches for Understanding the Materiality of Written Artefacts.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- A biological reading of a palimpsest.iScience · 2023Article
- Human and animal skin identified by palaeoproteomics in Scythian leather objects from Ukraine.PloS one · 2023Article
- Touching the (almost) untouchable: a minimally invasive workflow for microbiological and biomolecular analyses of cultural heritage objects.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Paleoproteomics.Chemical reviews · 2022Review
- A primer for ZooMS applications in archaeology.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Review
- The effect of eraser sampling for proteomic analysis on Palaeolithic bone surface microtopography.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Exceptional ancient DNA preservation and fibre remains of a Sasanian saltmine sheep mummy in Chehrābād, Iran.Biology letters · 2021Article
- Natural sciences at the service of art and cultural heritage: an interdisciplinary area in development and important challenges.Microbial biotechnology · 2021Article
- The books are alive with biological data: an introduction to the field of biocodicology and its implications for historical health sciences collections.Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA · 2021Article
- Successful extraction of insect DNA from recent copal inclusions: limits and perspectives.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Girding the loins? Direct evidence of the use of a medieval English parchment birthing girdle from biomolecular analysis.Royal Society open science · 2021Article
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12 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Medieval manuscripts, carefully curated and conserved, represent not only an irreplaceable documentary record but also a remarkable reservoir of biological information. Palaeographic and codicological investigation can often locate and date these documents with remarkable precision. The York Gospels (York Minster Ms. Add. 1) is one such codex, one of only a small collection of pre-conquest Gospel books to have survived the Reformation. By extending the non-invasive triboelectric (eraser-based) sampling technique eZooMS, to include the analysis of DNA, we report a cost-effective and simple-to-use biomolecular sampling technique for parchment. We apply this combined methodology to document for the first time a rich palimpsest of biological information contained within the York Gospels, which has accumulated over the 1000-year lifespan of this cherished object that remains an active participant in the life of York Minster. These biological data provide insights into the decisions made in the selection of materials, the construction of the codex and the use history of the object.
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